New York Legalization Advocates Suggest Using Pot Tax Revenue to Fix Subway

Every week, New York City residents lose hours of their lives to a rapidly deteriorating subway system. One in three weekday trains face delays. Power outages, crumbling platforms, track fires, collapsing tunnels, and overcrowding—everyone knows the subway is falling apart. But the money to fix it seems impossible to find. After decades of neglect, politicians are starting to talk the talk of a subway overhaul, yet adequate funding never seems to materialize. The problem, however, is already too large to ignore.

Today, the MTA subway system is little more than an ad hoc patchwork of emergency repairs barely holding cars and trains together. And short of tax increases, which no one in office seems willing to propose, the state and city are looking at anything and everything that could possibly fund the $40 billion investment it will take to fix things—including a regulated and taxed retail cannabis industry.

Subway riders in New York are so angry about the subway they might be willing to legalize anything as long as it improves service. Just check the #fucktheMTA hashtag on Twitter. Governments in weed-legal states across the country have funded public initiatives with cannabis taxes. And with New Yorkers already calling for an